Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  However much I try, don’t let me turn you against me. But since Marthe had joined them at Bône, Jerott thought, the man who had spoken those words had not been the same person. Or perhaps it was he himself who had changed.

  The Peppercorn, sailing east with a good deal of cargo to unload, ran into unpleasant weather after two weeks between Malta and Candia, and had to lower her sails.

  The silk-farmer’s sister, who was an old friend of the captain’s, was largely unaware of it: she had moved into his cabin a long time ago and was cementing the friendship with hashish. The cook, shredding salt meat and biscuit for the officers, took a bowl below now and then for the child Khaireddin, whom the woman had put in the gunroom. There was no light, but room enough for his pallet, and at night he shared the room with the comité and one or two others who ignored but did not ill-treat him. Only, alone during the first day of the storm, he could not keep his feet, being so young, and, rolling and sliding, was tossed for a while between the stores and the walls until, wedged in a corner, he fell abruptly asleep.

  When he awoke he was still alone, and one of the crates, shaken loose, was knocking about in the dark. He had learned not to cry, and made no sound in fact until, the ship tilting still further, the security of his corner suddenly dissolved, and he found himself again sliding to and fro in the dark, the loose cases beside him.

  When the comité unlocked the door the child had screeched himself into hysteria and the silk-farmer’s sister, irritated, gave him a thrashing. Then relenting, she lifted him on to his mattress, which the carpenter had nailed to the floor, fastened him to it safely with a lashing under his arms, and checked that the crates had been safely re-corded. He smiled at her hugely as she finished, and attempted, with distraught eyes, to press a kiss on her hand. When he screamed again, through the night, the comité got up, cursing, and tilted the ale-jug against the child’s mouth.

  It worked like a miracle. Finding his night’s sleep assured, the comité, as time went on, felt better disposed to the child. He cut the dirty fair hair which tangled over his eyes; picked off his lice; and, since he was always wet, found the boy a box full of straw to sleep in, tossing the soaked mat overboard. Then, having made the gunroom habitable, the comité largely forgot about him, except to observe to the silk-farmer’s sister, in case she had not already noticed, that the brat could hold his drink like a man.

  12

  Djerba

  The prisoners on Djerba were taken out of the palace in the afternoon when the sun, low in the blue sky, had lost the worst of its heat, and led to the arena where, flanked by the Aga Morat’s open-fronted pavilions, they sat under awnings on Turkey carpets covered with cushions, and prepared to watch his Arabs perform.

  Emerging from the depths of the palace in his own clothes, his hair still damp from the baths, unscented, unsmiling, Lymond did not speak to Jerott, although he answered Kiaya Khátún’s greeting with formal correctness. Marthe, her eyebrows lifted, said, ‘Good morning, Mr Blyth. Smile! You look like a toad in a creel full of flowers,’ and walking past him, still smiling, put her hand on her uncle’s arm. Onophrion followed. Güzel, watching them, her face thoughtful, left the palace a little later, with her attendants, to take place of honour beside the Aga Morat himself in the big, three-sided pavilion. That, later, she was to regret.

  The heat was stifling; and the noise, thought Jerott out of his permanent nausea, high-pitched and ululating, might have come from a pack of hysterical hounds. The arena was nothing more than a vast rectangle of plain, neither roped nor in any way circumscribed for the safety of the riders or of the robed and half-naked throng of spectators greeting, arguing, jostling in fez, turban and cap. Sellers of water, of sherbet and sesame bread pushed their way calling through the crowds; a patch of turbulence, marked by bleating, showed where someone had brought a kid and some hens maybe for barter.

  Desert Arabs watched in small clusters, silent under striped goat- and camel-hair, their wives veiled in blue cotton smocks, their glass rings glittering no less than their eyes. There were ragged Zinganges, thieves and idlers, selling stolen muscadines and waiting with ready fingers for unguarded purses: a Greek merchant, blue and white turban wrapped round his toque, clapping hands to have sherbet brought to himself and his secretary; women veiled and silent but for the silver chime of the earrings inside their long hair.

  Today, Kiaya Khátún was also veiled. Greek-fashion, the white silk fell back from her brow over her long blue-black hair, knotted with gold buttons and pearls and twined with coloured silk ribbons. Her charsháf, falling from the bridge of her nose, covered a fine shift, with wrought silk work at neck and borders and wrists, and she wore a silken coat over it, embroidered with jewels at its edge and dully shining, its leaf patterns damasked in white satin. Under the veil her earrings were tassels of seed pearls, the knots studded with rubies, but her fingers were ringless. From her head to her pale gilded buskins, she spoke of power and wealth.

  Beside her, in the Turkish collarless coat, buttoned with acorns, the Aga Morat was attempting, with smiling deference, to disguise the fact that they were quarrelling. His teeth shining white through his beard, he said, ‘My lord Dragut said nothing to the contrary.’

  ‘My lord Dragut,’ said Kiaya Khátún tartly, ‘could not have foreseen that the prisoners would be driven into such a position that they would be ready at any cost to attempt an escape. They are to be kept here, by whatever means, until the Knights of St John have made their attack on Zuara and have failed. If I cannot keep them under lock and key, I will keep them with drink and with drugs. Once they are comatose, you are welcome to visit whichever you choose.’

  ‘I find it difficult to understand,’ said the Aga, smiling harder still through his black beard, ‘why then they are here and not locked in the palace.’

  ‘Because, such is the wonder of your horsemen, my lord Aga, that my palace this day would empty itself, leaving the prisoners to Allah knows what mischief. Here, under your omnipotent eye, at least they are safe.’

  And the Aga Morat, longing in his eyes and rage in his heart, said, ‘I bow to thy wisdom. What is undone may be spun again … after Zuara.’

  Which was why Jerott Blyth, having allowed the sour milk to pass him, and the water-carrier with his sewn bearskin over his shoulder and his brass staff and cup, suddenly saw weaving through the crowds standing beside him something he did want, carried strapped over his shoulders by a crooked, grey-bearded pedlar in a frieze cloak and goatskin boots.

  From over a hundred heads Kiaya Khátún also saw him, recognized the shape of the bladder he carried and said to the Aga Morat, ‘There is the seller of harech. If they do not buy from him now, I shall see that he is sent to them later. By this evening we shall have some in the palace.’ It amused her to think that Dragut, the dreaded killer of the Levantines, was also a true son of Islam, and in his palace permitted no drinking of wine. None the less, she well knew, he would approve any order of hers which kept Francis Crawford and his adherents idle on Djerba while Islam overthrew the attacking Knights of St John.

  She looked over all the intervening heads to where Lymond sat on his cushions. He was very still, in a soft almond silk Onophrion must have had brought from the ship; his freshly cut hair burnished; his shirt-pleating white against his lightly browned skin. Then Jerott moved, and Lymond, turning, saw the pedlar of harech, summoned, begin to push his way over.

  Kiaya Khátún saw Lymond say something sharply and, putting out a hand, grip Jerott’s arm. And everyone there saw the white anger on Jerott Blyth’s face as, turning, he chopped his arm free with the edge of his hand and stood, awaiting the pedlar. Then the horsemen galloped on to the arena, and the little scene dissolved, as men knelt and stood to see better. Satisfied, Kiaya Khátún sank back and watched.

  Two hundred yards wide, the exercise-ground stretched on either side of her awning, and receded before her for much farther than that. In the middle distance before her they had aligned three markers
of sand, a spear as mark stuck in each, with sufficient space between for six horses to gallop abreast. And in lines of six, level as beading, the riders dashed along the sand now, one line to each course, straight-backed on the small, high-saddled horses, bow at pommel, quiver at shoulder and lance, streaming its long scarlet gold-lettered pennant, held straight as the wires of a cage in each horseman’s grip.

  For display, Güzel saw, the Aga Morat had given them identical clothing in Dragut Rais’s colours. Each rider, besides his white turban, wore a scarlet knee-length coat with wide gathered sleeves over white shirt and striped girdle and long, loose trousers of blue. Flashing past the three heaps of sand to the far end of the arena they had dismounted as one, and each throwing off his coat and quiver, unbuckled and flung down his saddle, remounted, and seizing a handful of darts, set off bareback at full tilt on the return journey, strung out along the four courses, mane, tail and girdle fringe streaming. One after the other the darts arched and tocked into the targets as each man, his horse gripped in his thighs, fled past, turned, flung and, whooping, galloped on up to the awnings and bending, scooped up the staves waiting there. For a second they were all beside her, jostling, shouting, steaming; then, assembled like mercury, they were lined up once more and dashing back to the mark, staves in hand, had struck it and, turning, had flung down the staves and taken up quivers and arrows.

  The horses were beautiful: chestnut, golden bays, piebald and dappled, with the small tapering head and arched neck of the Arab, and the swift, free-shouldered gallop. And the speed, whether one cared for horses or not, was entrancing. Smiling her appreciation, Güzel glanced away for a moment to the other awning on her right, found what she was looking for, and watched, her brow creasing. Then, making up her mind, she turned and spoke to the Aga Morat. On the arena the bowmen, galloping from both ends, were passing and repassing in pattern, shooting at the mark as they went. ‘I should say,’ said Georges Gaultier with a connoisseur’s interest, ‘that that’s dangerous.’

  He was, perhaps, the only interested party in the immediate vicinity who was not watching Jerott Blyth and Lymond. After the blow which had loosened the other man’s grip, Jerott had wrenched himself free of the crowd and, pulling out the few coins which were all Güzel had left him, offered them all to the harech-seller. Those whose view he was blocking shouted, and the guards, standing along the open back of their dais, murmured insults and watched with contempt. The harech-seller, unhooking his cup, filled it with raw spirit and leaned to give it to Jerott. Lymond took it, and quite calmly emptied it out on the sand.

  It splashed a little over them both. The smell of it, reeking from his clothes, turned Jerott’s head: he had drunk nothing, after all, since his illness. As the pedlar scrambled for the fallen cup among the wet cushions, he turned on Francis Crawford, his face hollow, and brought up his hands.

  Lymond said, very softly, in English, ‘This is part of a plan to escape. Pretend to strike me, and listen.’

  ‘You stinking catamite,’ said Jerott; and with all his considerable strength launched a blow at Lymond’s face which was very genuine indeed. It was parried with an abruptness that rattled his teeth.

  ‘All right, Jerott,’ said Lymond levelly. Without pausing, he closed in, gripped Jerott’s arm, and against the wildest resistance managed, in two apparently smooth steps, to engineer a full wrestler’s lock on the other man. In humiliation and acute physical anguish, Jerott drew a deep breath and prepared, at the cost of a fracture, to shove. Lymond said, ‘The Maltese fleet under Strom is attacking Zuara. They’ll step into a trap: Gabriel has warned the Aga Morat.’

  Jerott frowned. His face scarlet, his shirt soaked, his muscles corded with effort, he did not think of giving in. But he had stopped pushing while, breathing quickly, he said, ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Archie Abernethy.’

  Jerott looked up. ‘How? Where is he?’

  ‘Break my grip and say something aloud.… He was in camp, peddling liquor, last night.’ He pulled his hand free, swearing, and Jerott, who perhaps had not meant to bite so deeply, staggered back and said, ‘Who’s going to stop me?’ for the benefit of the English-speaking spectators. Onophrion, worried, got to his feet. Jerott added, breathlessly, ‘Philippa?’

  ‘All I know is, she’s safe.… If you’re coming with me, listen,’ said Lymond. He ducked, and then swung a punch that did not quite go wide. ‘And then knock me out cold.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ said Jerott. His dark eyes were bleak. ‘And if I succeed?’

  ‘You won’t,’ Lymond said.

  But all the same, when Jerott hit him a few seconds later he hurtled back through cushions and shoulders and struck a tent-pole like a shellfish cracked by a seagull. Onophrion, too late to stop it, caught him as he slithered down to the ground and, tut-tutting, propped cushions about him. Sitting down, neatly and quietly, Jerott Blyth drank off three cups of harech, and handed the bowl back for more.

  In the arena, they had saddled the horses, and, stringing off down the courses full pelt, began one after the other to alight and resume saddle over and over; feet racing beside the galloping horse, wrists jerking, spine, thighs and calves in the blue pantaloons soaring; seat in saddle again until, approaching the mark, they snatched their bows, strung and shot. They did the same, bending and unbending their bows three times between setting-off point and mark; the same alighting and jumping up on both sides of the horse; the same jumping right way and reversed; the same standing, hallooing, on their mounts’ heaving rumps.

  The arrows whickered into the marks. The horses’ hooves, neat and small, flashed pounding from position to position, slithering to a halt in front of Güzel in a shallow veil of white grit. Teeth flashed. Bodies hurtled, lissom and sinewy, and in a triumph of shouts, at the end of each violent, brilliant course, the scimitars flashed, pulled with a cry from the sheaths and glittering, a dozen half-eclipsed suns in the bright cobalt sky.

  Georges Gaultier said, ‘Even if you have bought the whole cask, Mr Blyth, I should desist. That stuff can bund.’

  Jerott Blyth pulled himself upright on his cushion, lifted the cup at his feet after two misses, and held it out. ‘Have some.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Maître Gaultier. ‘For spirits one requires a strong head or else a weak brain, and I fear I possess neither.’

  Jerott grunted. The boy had gone. Beside him, bought outright with money borrowed from anyone who would lend it, was the harech-vendor’s cask, half empty: a dark dribble from his less than accurate pouring contoured the crimson silk cushions with their velvet raised pattern. A little way off Salablanca, warned off already, sat watching him crosslegged. Jerott said, ‘Bloody Muslim: y’r old man had the idea, hadn’t he? No wine. A d’vil in ev’ry grape. Didn’ say a word about spirits, did he? Cunning old devil.’ He poured himself another cup, belligerently, his eyes half shut, and viewed the field. ‘Cur-tailed, skin-clipping heathens.’

  The riders, with graceful accuracy, were shooting now with saddles girthed and ungirthed, buckled time about with crackling speed. Jerott turned his head from bleary contemplation of that, and viewed Lymond over several intervening heads. Lymond, dizzily sitting up, was at least sober, with Onophrion bending fussily over him. As Jerott watched, one of the Aga Morat’s men also approached and, leaning down, spoke.

  It appeared to be a summons of sorts. Jerott saw Lymond look up, holding the back of his head; and then Onophrion, bending, began to help him to his feet. He looked vaguely taken aback and as if, thought Jerott with satisfaction, he had a hell of a headache. Escorted by the messenger and two guards Lymond, walking, disappeared into the Aga Morat’s draped dais. ‘Stinking catamite,’ Jerott repeated.

  The rider nearest to Kiaya Khátún alighted, flipped a somersault and, vaulting back into the saddle, shot three times, accurately, into the mark. The next, calling a roar from the crowd, lay on his face prone in the saddle, the little mare’s tail in his mouth, and shot, grinning. The next, riding bareback and
without bridle, stood on his hands until close to the mark; somersaulted, took aim and shot. Güzel said, ‘A drink, Mr Crawford. It will help to remove the effects of your young friend’s bad manners.’

  Sitting very still, with the Aga Morat’s plump hand on his shoulder, Lymond said, ‘I thank you; no.’

  ‘Abstinence, like the cock sparrow, cannot be long lived,’ said Güzel blandly. ‘They say, si peccas, pecca fortiter.’ The cup she held out, unlike Jerott’s, was made of jasper and ringed with Corinthian letters, gilded and damascened. But the drink was the same.

  ‘Indeed, some Stoics uphold you,’ said Lymond, wide-eyed, his gaze on the arena. ‘Liberty to drink and to debauch are said to recreate and refresh the soul.’

  ‘Then——’ said Kiaya Khátún.

  ‘I have no soul,’ said Lymond. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘But your servants have,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘Or at least flesh which may suffer. Drink, Mr Crawford.’

  And as the Aga Morat’s hand slid from his shoulder, he took the cup slowly from her and drank; and when she refilled it, meeting his eyes, he drained it again; and a third time.

  Soon after that, Jerott rose undulating to his feet and, mouthing a long and explicit, if slurred, insult in Arabic, lobbed a cushion into the arena. It fell in front of a bareback rider at a crucial moment of balance: the horse shied, and the rider, saving himself in a snap of white and scarlet and blue, fell rolling like tumbleweed in the path of the next, and was kicked. From the three sides of the arena and the two stands at its head a communal moaning arose, and Georges Gaultier, seated just behind Jerott, reached up and, with force, drew him down to his seat and held him there, addressing conciliatory Arabic to the guards. The injured man was dragged off.

  ‘God grant sweet rest to the Knights of St John.’ It was Marthe’s bitter-sweet voice. ‘The other great cavalier, too, bids fair to be crapulous, I observe. O Kama, Kama: with thy bow made of sugarcane strung of bees, and thy five flower-tipped arrows?’